Thursday, August 09, 2007 Editorials: Just calm down, folks
LISTENING to the verbal exchange sparked by President Arroyo’s order for the transfer of the Central Command (Centcom) headquarters from Lahug in Cebu City to Mactan Island, one can`t help but be amused.
Some people do have a penchant to talk even if not all the facts are in.
Cebu City Hall officials, meanwhile, are rather too eager to incorporate talks on the Centcom transfer into its continuing offensive against the Provincial Capitol.
All these reactions, however, could be but a variation of that dictum about counting the eggs even before they are hatched.
Not a sure thing
While the announcement, made during Arroyo’s recent visit to Cebu, may have taken the form of an order, it is not like the Centcom headquarters is a folding bed that one can just snap close and carry to another place.
And not all presidential pronouncements are realized.
Remember the supposed transfer of the main office of the Department of Tourism to Cebu that until how has remained just a plan?
One does not really know the barriers---whether financial, legal or whatever---that my crop up on the way to the actual implementation of the plan.
Besides, the actual transfer itself takes time.
Which means that even after the saliva spewed by those who are participating in the current verbal exchange have been used up, no relocation may happen yet.
Haste, noise
Of course, there is nothing wrong with being forward looking, like what some residents of Barangay Apas and officials of City Hall and Capitol are trying to do.
Indeed, there is a reason for affected families to worry about their status once Capitol reclaims ownership of the Centcom lot.
Nobody can also stop Mayor Tomas Osmeña and Councilor Gerardo Carillo from playing the spoiler by ranting about their love for the poor residents and the plan to tie Capitol’s hands by rezoning the areas where Provincial Government lots are located.
And Capitol can’t be prevented from starting to figure out what it will do to the lots, all 80 hectares of them, once Centcom vacates the present Camp Lapu-Lapu site.
But why the haste by these protagonists to start pulling each other’s hair over a process that will take months, even years, to complete?
